The Lost Weekend (1945)

Subject: Don Birnam (Played by Ray Milland)

Diagnosis: Alcohol Dependence

Emphasis: Focal Point

Explicit/Implied Mental Disorder: Explicit

Accuracy

Ray Milland's performance of the struggling alcoholic Don Birnam would have been perfectly acceptable in the 1940's. However the nebulous onset of Birnam's alcoholism with today's knowledge of genetic links of alcoholism calls the diagnosis into question. We can infer from Birnam's recounting of his relationship with the bottle that he started drinking out of a fear of failure. If Birnam was an alcoholic he would have the drink to consume alcohol regardless of that fear. However, I'll grant that it's possible that his fear of failure simply piqued his alcoholic tendencies since his history before he started drinking isn't explored.

The most difficult part of acting as an alcoholic is playing a convincing drunk. Milland's ability to imitate inebriation is successful when he's uttering a particularly sad sentiment or flirting with a woman. But the success of his drunken state can be disrupted by an angry tirade or rant in which he embodies Clark Gable or Laurence Olivier in confidence and stature.

Criticism

The movie focuses solely on Birnam's alcoholism and paints the tragic effects of alcoholism with a brutality that was absent from cinema in the 1940's.

The film opens with a shot of a bottle of whiskey dangling out of an apartment window. When his brother discovers the bottle of whiskey, Don covers by saying he must have hid it before he stopped drinking 10 days ago. Birnam makes an attempt to keep his habit a secret to everyone, except the bartender who he spills his sordid history to. He even goes so far as to buy apples to hide the bottles of alcoholic he's carrying from the judging eyes of his neighbors; perhaps even himself.

There is a particularly moving scene where Birnam describes to the bartender how he feels empowered by alcohol.

"It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys. Yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly, I'm above the ordinary. I'm competent, supremely competent. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michelangelo molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh, painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz, playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of them. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there it's not Third Avenue any longer. It's the Nile, Nat. The Nile and down it moves the barge of Cleopatra."

Birnam was lauded as the next Hemingway when he was younger. After moving to New York, he found the critics and public weren't as enthused with his writing. So he reached for the bottle as a coping device. He couldn't possibly write while intoxicated or hung over or (more importantly) judge himself for having not written anything truly "great." In his mind being an alcoholic isn't nearly as terrible as being a failure.

The film's composer (Miklos Rozsa) unfortunately uses the theramin to portray Birnam's tortured emotional and psychological state. Using the theramin was experimental in the 1940's, however after being associated with a number of science fiction films, its use throughout the The Lost Weekend feels comical. The Lost Weekend won the Oscar for Best Picture and Ray Milland won the Oscar for Best Actor, deservingly so. Though the film might be dated, the torment of an alcoholic is certainly not extinct in today's world.

As a completely unrelated sidenote, the movie may be the first time ridiculous was truncated to ridic, though I doubt it caught on in the 1940's. Mention is also shortened to ment(ch) and thankfully that never stuck.